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Looks like a good case. However, I'm not sure if its just me, but the titles on those graphs just look blurry to me. Also, that's the first time I've ever seen minutes of a degree so casually used in a review, I had to do a double take to make sure I was understanding it right.Reply

I love giant cases; easier to put things in and take things out of! That said I wish the exhaust was out the top like the TJ11, to me once I got used to it, exhausting out the top was the superior option.

I too would like wheels but the case is already very tall; are there any low profile rollers we could put underneath (no way we'd fit regular wheels under there)Reply

Convection has next to zero effect compared to forced airflow with the fans we're talking about here. Orientation doesn't really matter. If you flip one of these cases so the back is now the top or so, you get almost exactly the same temperatures, just maybe a degree off, as shown in tests.Reply

Yes I know, the difference in temperatures is negligible. It has always upset me that the temps don't show a larger difference.And yet, because it should theoretically be better, isn't it enough to convince you to choose top over rear?All else being equal, let's go with the flow.But if there's a sufficient reason to choose the rear, the rising hot air thing is easily defeated.Reply

No, you may need some special provision (extra height so extra volume overall) to allow sufficient intake from the bottom and exhaust out the top. If you do a layout with motherboard I/O facing up, having cables stick out perpendicular to the ground means more volume or some kind of messiness or contraption to guide them out horizontally. If you have exhausts on the top, dust can readily fall in when the system is not in use.

Though depending on layout and restrictions of your living area, some arrangement using top exhaust could be nicer. It just usually doesn't seem as sensible.Reply

Best thing about orienting the motherboards 90 degrees rotated is that your GPUs (and in theory expansion cards) hang down from the case and this greatly reduces the stresses on the GPUs, PCIe slots, and motherboard. But simply exhausting out the top without rotating the motherboard doesn't really make much of a difference.Reply

And then you get your display cables et al sticking out the top of the case rather than the back. Convenient, but ugly. The Silverstone FT03 has an interesting compromise to work around that, however the convenience factor is largely lost.Reply

Actually, I skipped such an endeavor thinking that it could be deceiving, as it could appear a lot more messy than it could have become after some care and consideration when routing the cables. On the other hand however, I reconsidered and now think that it would be a good idea to show just how messy things can become. I will plan on adding such info in my future articles.Reply

A silent PC was a challenge in 2005 or so. You had to mad, tinker, experiment.Nowadays CPUs and GPUs idle in single watts, good PSUs are semi-passive and half a terabyte of solid state storage are affordable. Reply

I have a Deep Silence 2 case, and while it's a decent case, it's not perfect. On the Deep Silence 2 at least, the air chimney at the top stays open well enough, but I would prefer a reassuring "click" at the top. The hard drive bays (of which there are many) are designed in such a way that they block a lot of airflow... I would prefer a more skeleton-ized design, to let the air move through. And finally, while the doors have a satisfying heft to them, they use a latching system similar to cheap cases today, and of a decade ago. When spending this much of a case, I want the doors to go on with zero hassle. They're not the worst I've ever used, but certainly not the best design. Reply

One other thing to note, on the white case at least, the difference between the white plastic and the white painted steel is noticeable... not terrible, but when it sits on your desk awhile, you'll notice it. Reply

Whoever copy edited this article (or didn't) did an atrocious job. First page, "four different cooling fans series" and "where the only option as to import their products" and it only goes downhill from there.

E. Fylladitakis Would you please do temperature testing with the chimney closed? I'd trade cooling performance for the quiet. I prefer computers to run as quietly as possible and thus run as few fans as possible.

One of my computers has a power supply fan and CPU fan and that's it the 7950 GTX with a stock oc is passively cooled. The second computer which is a current build has a core i7 3770K at 4.3GHZ 4 hard disks and a graphics card there's an intake fan on the hard disks, a single fan on the CPU, the cooler had two I removed 1, a fan on the GPU, and the power supply fan. All the fans are running slow, everything is temperature controlled, so nothing to worry about. Reply

It's an interesting case, but the noise levels are pretty disappointing for a case of this name. I now swear by Prolimatech Ultra Sleek Vortex 14's for both CPU coolers and case-fans; 15mm thick 140mm fans that fit 120mm fan mounts, but they are very quiet for the amount of air they push. Not quite as silent as I'd like, but a fan mechanical noise can be cancelled with a layer of acoustic foam on the inside of your case, particularly the side panel on the main access side.

But yeah, there are definitely things that could be done to make this case a lot quieter, and which you could probably do to a more typical non "Silence" case with pretty much the same effect. The only feature that really stands out to me is the disk trays with rubber spacers, but then you can get these in many other cases too, or you can get a case with tons of 5.25" bays and install your own noise cancelation there, though of course it's more expensive that way.Reply